A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  Rose. Rose, burn it, write back, already! Rose, if you’ve gone back into stasis, I’m searching the world over to wake you up again! Answer me!

  I quickly pulled up a keypad, even as Otto continued, Come on! Where are you?

  Please, don’t let that thing be after you again!

  I’m here, I wrote, stepping on his notes. Still here, unfortunately.

  Thank every god ever invented. Where are you?

  Nowhere, I answered truthfully. I didn’t know where I was, and it didn’t matter.

  No, really. Where are you?

  I honestly don’t know, I told him. Just skimming around ComUnity.

  I was worried about you. You weren’t answering your screen yesterday.

  I forgot it.

  I saw Bren in the quad just now and asked if he knew what had happened to you. He’s worried about you. Can I tell him where you are?

  No. You can tell him I’m okay, if you must.

  Good. He went home and checked your tube after you ran off. When you weren’t there, he got scared. His parents made him come to school, but he can’t concentrate.

  I’m afraid I don’t care much, I wrote.

  Hold on — Mr. Prokiov is on me about linking up during class. I’ll be right back.

  There was a long, long time when the screen went still. I curled up onto the skiff’s seats and tried to force sanity back into my head. I couldn’t.

  My screen dinged again. There, I’m in the quad. Bren told me what happened this morning.

  There was really only one thing I could say to that. Coit. Then I asked, How much?

  You can tell a long story really fast in your mind, he wrote.

  Coit, I wrote again. Could I ask you to employ your code of ethics and not share this story around? Like, not with Nabiki, not even your family? I actually cared what they thought of me, and this was too weird probably even for them.

  I swear on 42’s grave.

  I was touched. Thanks.

  Nabiki and I broke up, he wrote.

  I wasn’t sure why he was telling me this. What? Why?

  Well. You remember that fiercely protective thing she had for me?

  Yes.

  “Well. When you told me someone was trying to assassinate you, I kind of had the same feeling. I’ve spent the last few days hacking through the net, trying to find out anything and everything that might help. Nabiki didn’t like it, said I wasn’t getting enough sleep. She said you had plenty of people looking out for you, and you didn’t need me. I nearly . . . well, it was only a thought, but she was touching me at the time. I wanted to hit her. I’m a bit of a paci fist, and I don’t think that kind of thing very often, not even about guys who beat me up

  — and, yes, that has happened. Nabiki said that if I was thinking like that, then maybe I didn’t need her anymore. She was right.

  If Otto’s compliments were as intense as he said they were, I hated to think what his anger was like. No. Go back to her, I wrote. Tell her you’re sorry. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s relationships.

  You haven’t. One of the convenient things about my form of communication is that I can quickly convey and assimilate everything someone is feeling. What Nabiki loved was being needed. Now I’m the one who . . . Look, let me come to you. I was touched. Not that Otto could do much to protect me from a Plastine.

  You need family. Where are you?

  I really don’t know.

  Tell your skiff to come to the school. We can talk in the dorms.

  We’re talking now.

  No, we’re not.

  It took me a long time to understand what he meant. You don’t want to be in my head right now, I wrote to him.

  Maybe, Otto wrote back.

  Otto, even I don’t want to be in my head right now.

  Maybe not, he wrote. But you can’t be alone. Someone’s trying to assassinate you, Rose!

  I sighed. Okay, I wrote back. But I don’t know how far I am.

  I’ll be waiting.

  The link disconnected, and I told my skiff to head for Uni Prep. It turned, the machinery giving the more satis fied hum it had when there was a de finite destination in its processors.

  It took my skiff about an hour to reach the school. The ever- widening circles around ComUnity had taken me pretty far out of the way. The skiff stopped just outside the quad, but I told it to circle around the school to the dorms. I wondered how I was supposed to find him, but Otto was waiting on a bench under a tree, just outside the boys’ dorm. As soon as he spotted the skiff, my notescreen dinged. Right here, he wrote. I said I’d be waiting.

  I opened the door to my skiff and climbed out. I was able to construct a smile of greeting, but it was as forced as his own usually were. It fell apart almost instantly.

  Otto jumped forward and put his hand on the small of my back, guiding me toward the school without touching my skin. It felt very different having him here, beside me. I’d almost turned the Otto I saw at school and the Otto I spoke to on my screen into two different people. I barely knew this Otto. I didn’t know what to say. We walked in utter silence.

  Otto watched me through his yellow eyes. He forced a smile and then held open the door to the dorms for me. I took a deep breath before I went inside. There was a brief hum as the security system registered our presence.

  TARGET IDENTIFIED: RETINAL MATCH CONFIRMED, ROSALINDA SAMANTHA FITZROY. LOCATION KNOWN.

  The target had not been at the last known coordinates, in the UniCorp Building, and he had resigned himself to returning to his station. He hadn’t made it there yet when the information filtered to him through the net. He entered the new location into the hover yacht controls. Slowly, it turned toward UniCorp Preparatory School.

  Otto led me to a kind of visitors’ lounge. It was bright and impersonal, and it reminded me of my parents’ style of decorating. I still felt awkward. “I really don’t know what to say.”

  Otto shook his head, don’t worry. He reached out a hand toward mine.

  “No,” I said, pulling away. I touched my forehead to hide my eyes. “Otto, you really don’t want to know.”

  There was a long moment of stillness, and then my note-screen dinged. I looked up. Otto had moved across the room and was sitting in a chair facing away from me. I swallowed and looked down at my screen. How are you feeling?

  I sat down, relieved. I’m okay, I wrote.

  You don’t look okay.

  I haven’t slept, I wrote. I ran for the third time from an indestructible assassin, worked my way back from the Unicorn Islands with only a sketchbook to my name, discovered that my parents had intentionally abandoned me for at least twenty- nine years in stasis, and then realized I’d fallen in love with my old boyfriend’s grandson. I put down my screen and looked up at him. “My extremely old boyfriend, I might add,” I said aloud. I sighed and buried my head in my hands.

  I heard Otto shift, and then my screen dinged again. I uncovered my eyes. Otto had turned to face me, but he was looking at his screen. That’s what’s really bothering you, isn’t it, he had written. This Xavier of yours.

  “Sort of,” I admitted.

  That’s what made you run away.

  “God, Bren really told you everything, didn’t he.”

  He recognized my concern as real.

  I shook my head, relieved that for once he could see it. “Why?” I asked. “What do you see in me?”

  He looked up from his notescreen, and his eyes searched mine for a moment. I could try to show you, if you’d like, he wrote, turning back to his screen. I’m not used to having to find words for this kind of thing. It isn’t anything so simple that I can encapsulate it in a glib phrase. He paused before he wrote again. Or even in a heartfelt, serious phrase.

  I didn’t know what to say to any of that. He was right. Some feelings just didn’t turn into language very easily. I thought I could paint a picture that would have the same impact, but even that wouldn�
�t have exactly the same meaning.

  As I watched him, he started writing again.

  Why do you keep talking to me? Maybe the answer is there.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “You’re interesting and different and anyone would be curious.”

  If you were just curious, you would have taken me up on my offer and looked up the medical records, he wrote. He wrote much faster than I ever did, but I supposed he had more practice. That’s what most people do. Much of my life is public record, down in a dozen science mags on the net. Not to mention all the UniCorp files, which I know you could access. You looked to me, not those.

  “True,” I whispered. “I feel . . . I meant it when I said I’d be your family. I feel like I already am.”

  You don’t have any other family.

  “I did once. They loved me.”

  Otto looked up from his screen without writing another word. I could read it in his eyes, though. Yellow. Inhuman. His very DNA tattered and stitched together to form an alien monster, without a home, without a family, without a species.

  Did they love you? his eyes said. Did they really? Or did they love you the way UniCorp loved me?

  “Why did you try for the scholarship?” I asked him, ignoring the unspoken question.

  His eyes narrowed, perplexed. I supposed it did seem incongruous. He turned back to his screen. To win my freedom. He hesitated, then asked, Why?

  “I won a scholarship once.” The words were painful to say. “To the Hiroko Academy of Art, sixty- two years ago.”

  Why didn’t you go?

  “I went into stasis instead.”

  Is that what you wanted to do?

  That was the question I’d been avoiding asking myself ever since I’d gotten out of stass. The answer made me feel ill. “Yes,” I whispered.

  Why?

  I stood up, dropping my own screen. “Why do you keep asking why?” I demanded.

  Otto glared at me, and his hands moved in an intricate pattern I couldn’t read.

  “What?”

  He made an irritated dolphin like noise and picked up his screen. He thrust it into my hands. Because I care! it read.

  I hung my head. “Why?”

  He moved his hands again. I didn’t know the language, but it was beautiful. He did the same series of gestures again. He held his palm out to me, then pointed his two index fingers sharply together, patted the back of his left hand, and then held his hand against his heart. And I understood it, without a word. Your pain touches my own.

  But our pain was so different. His was forced upon him. Mine I had embraced by choice. “I hurt Xavier,” I whispered. “I broke his heart. I used everything I knew about him, turned his love for me into a weapon, to make him go. That’s why I wanted to go into stass. That’s why I got forgotten. That’s why I didn’t deserve to wake up, ever!”

  Otto put his hand over his heart and held out his other hand. I could read the meaning in his eyes. Please. I hesitated, then whispered, “I’m sorry.” His face fell — not as expressionless as I’d thought, now that we were so close. But he’d misunderstood me. I was apologizing for what my mind was about to force upon him. The tangled briar of my own blame.

  My hand reached for his.

  – chapter 23—

  It was sixty- two years, eight months, and twelve days earlier that my life had started on the path that led to this horror. It began as good news. I was leaving my art class when Mr. Sommers stopped me. “Could I speak to you for a moment, Rose?” he asked.

  I swallowed, afraid I’d done something wrong again. You’d have thought that art would be the one subject in which I would have no troubles. No such luck.

  In my academic classes, my teachers regarded me with a quiet despair. In my art classes, I frequently had teachers who regarded me with either rank envy or open hostility. The hostility usually resulted from my constant presence in their classroom —early morning to late evening, and sometimes my lunch period —and the fact that I used ten times as many art supplies as any other student they’d ever had. I was pretty sure I was about to get another lecture about wasting the school’s resources.

  “Rose, I need to talk with you about something,” Mr.

  Sommers began.

  “I’m sorry,” I said automatically.

  Mr. Sommers raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

  “For whatever I did,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Mr. Sommers smiled then. “This isn’t anything bad.” I looked up at him in surprise. “You remember those extra- credit paintings you brought in for me?”

  “Yes,” I said. This school had a small art gallery, and they tried to hang some of the students’ artwork, along with local professional artists’ work. Three months ago, Mr. Sommers had offered extra credit to anyone who wanted to bring in a piece they had done outside of class, for possible display in the gallery. I’d brought in half a dozen oil paintings. None of them had been hung in the gallery, but I didn’t mind. I got the extra credit whether they were chosen for display or not.

  “I was very impressed by your skill,” Mr. Sommers said. “So impressed that I collected some of the assignments you’ve done for me, along with those paintings, and shipped them to a friend of mine who is on the awards committee for the Young Masters Program for Artistic Excellence. Have you heard of them?”

  I had. For the last ten years, they had been the premiere world venue for serious art students. I’d known about them since I entered middle school . . .

  which, admittedly, was several years ago. “Did he like them?” I asked, more curious than hopeful. If his friend thought that I had the potential to enter the Young Masters Program in two or three years’ time, I was well pleased.

  “He liked them well enough that he sent me a message today, informing me that one of your paintings has been selected as one of the two winners of the painting category.”

  I gasped. “What?” That was impossible! Senior apprentices to famous artists entered the Young Masters Program. College art majors. Already established artists under twenty- one. For a high- school student to have won one of the categories was virtually unheard of. “ W-which painting?”

  “The one you labeled Undersky.”

  I nearly sobbed with happiness. It was the painting I’d felt sure I’d never get a chance to finish, the one with the tortured mountains and the undersky plant life.

  “The awards ceremony is held in New York every year, and you’ve already won transportation to and from it for you and a family member. Winning one of the categories is an immense honor.” I didn’t need him to tell me that, but he went on. “This makes you one of ten individuals who might win the Young Masters Award. The portfolio I collected for you will be compared with the winners of the other four categories, and we’ll find out at the awards ceremony whether you’ve earned the title of this year’s Young Master. If you have, you’ll be awarded a free place in the Young Masters Summer Art Tour through Europe, plus a full scholarship to the Hiroko Academy of Art once you’ve finished high school.”

  I had never thought about needing money before in my life. My parents were disgustingly wealthy. But I realized as he said it that my parents’ money belonged to them. If I were to go to a college, it would be one they selected for me. If I were to go on a tour of Europe, they were the ones who would have to send me. Since they had never allowed me to leave Com-Unity without them, except to go to school, I was pretty sure they never would.

  If I were to win the Young Masters Award, I’d be . . .

  Free of them?

  That was an odd thought. But that was what passed through my head. I’d be free.

  And it all came crashing down the next second. “Since you are underage, I’ll have to have your parents’ consent for you to go to the awards ceremony. Can you arrange that?”

  I faltered for a moment. “I . . . I wouldn’t know what to say to them.”

  Mr. Sommers nodd
ed. “Understandable. I’ll call them this evening and discuss this opportunity with them.” He smiled. “You should be very proud of yourself, young lady. This is an honor not many can achieve.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, sir,” I said. I’d never noticed Mr. Sommers taking any particular interest in me. But now that I thought about it, this was the first time I’d had the same art teacher for more than six months. I’d always switched schools and missed months so often that I was never able to establish a rapport with any of them.

  “You just keep up the good work, Rose. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll make the arrangements for the trip.”

  I went home with a copy of the award announcement gripped in my hand.

  When I got through the door, I ran to Åsa and told her all about it.

  “Ah, flicka,” she said. “I knew you would do well.” She wasn’t one for words or kisses, but she started making cookies. Since we usually ordered our food delivered from the Unicorn servants in the central kitchens, this was a serious gesture.

  When I told Xavier, he scooped me up in his arms with a whoop. He read the announcement aloud to the trees and flowers, and he made me pretend to go up and accept my award. He played master of ceremonies, and when I accepted, he surprised me with an early rose from the garden. “A rose for my Rose,” he said, and kissed me sweetly. “I’m so happy for you.”

  When I got back inside, I was surprised that my parents were already home.

  Mom poured me a glass of champagne. “Mr. Sommers told me all about it,”

  Mom said the moment I came in the door. “Well done, Rosalinda!”

  “Good girl,” Daddy said, but he barely looked up from his files. I was used to that, though.

  “You’re happy?” I asked, surprised. I didn’t know why I’d half thought my parents wouldn’t be happy. They always approved of me spending my time with, as Daddy put it, my little paint set. They loved me and wanted what was best for me. Of course they were pleased! I grinned broadly.

  “It’s a wonderful achievement,” Mom told me. “I’m very proud of you. Don’t you worry about anything, either. I’ve already taken care of it with your art teacher.